Team11.Digital Transformation Project: The Role of IT in B2B eCommerce- Sana Commerce Company

This is the executive summary of the report analyzing the current business model of Sana Commerce and the role of IT and information used inside of the organization with further goal to improve current information use within the company.

The first part of the report focuses on describing the business model of the organization.

Sana Commerce is an international B2B e-commerce company providing software solutions to manufacturers and distributors operating in the industry. The company offers two main types of products: a software solution for creation of web shop, and an ordering app for sales agents. Value to its customers is given by offering a fast and convenient link between ERP system of a customer and its potentially new Web Shop. The firm sells licenses of the software to businesses either by selling an unlimited one-time license tied to a particular version of Sana Commerce software, or by yearly subscription which includes upgrades to new versions. Another revenue source for the company is the customization of the software. Market strategy of Sana Commerce involves a well-designed SEO, implemented in the company’s website and software tool, Marketo, for its marketing automation and retaining its customers. The marketing opportunity of the company is unlimited due to the tremendous growth of the industry and the raising need in the B2B e-commerce solution market. The competition is presented by companies like Magento, K-eCommerce, and Dynamicweb, and all three companies are substantially bigger than Sana Commerce. However the main advantage of Sana lies in the deep integration of its platform into the already existing ERP-system of their customers.

The second part of the report focuses on internal part of the business, mainly the IT structure and use of information inside the company and solution of existing problems.

We can categorize IT applications in the organization into Process Supporting IT functions and Communication Enhancing IT Functions. The focus of this report will further be addressed towards communication enhancing IT functions. After profound analysis of the current communication channels within the organization we identified the communication, coordination and referral problem that the employees are encountered with on a daily basis. Our team has come up with five options to tackle the issue: Slack, Glip, HipChat, Exo Platform and Bitrix 24. We outlined several criteria (channel creation and management, integration with other online platforms, ease of use and modifiability of the solution etc.) to evaluate the available options. After careful analysis and discussion, our team has chosen #Slack platform to address the issues encountered by Sana Commerce. Slack is an internal communication platform that will be beneficial to the company due to allowance of channel creation and management, one-on-one communications, integrations with numerous other platforms in use and it is web and app compatible. However, there are certain downsides present, such as possible privacy threat and unstable payment requirements placed by the platform. Also, there are certain risks, which in this case include risk of adoption, unsolved referral and potential decline of the usage of the platform. The possible solutions to the raised issues are the top management involvement in the promotion of the platform, internal customized design and organizational effort to create sharing information, knowledge and help culture within the company. The report also analyses the technological, strategic and financial fit of #Slack with regard to Sana Commerce, as well as feasibility of implementation of the project.

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